“The Day The Music Died*”

This Summer slips in

by May’s side door unannounced!

With one chill to come.

(Written May 14, 2017 and just after finishing I heard on local AM radio (WPGS 840) today was the anniversary of the deaths of J. P. Richardson “The Big Bopper”, Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly and pilot Roger Peterson in an airplane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa on February 3, 1959 and was obliquely referred to in Don McLean’s seminal “American Pie,” Why the local oldies – or I – was confused to equate May 14 for an earlier signal date in modern American Rock-n-Roll history is beyond me. But in searching the re-memberance I found one fact I either never knew or had forgotten. Richardson had traded places with Waylon Jennings on that ill-fated plane for a cold bus trip to Minnesota instead.)